If you can get past some stuff...

Rating: 8/10 (7 August 2005)

***1/2 out of ****
This might be a fun movie, if you get past some things. For example, in the beginning of it, you may not like much, since it's a completely rip-off of George Lucas' THX-1138 (1971) where there's also a controlled society living in an underground city, with more rules than privileging, and everyone is dressed on white. I like to think that this wasn't an imitation of THX at all, but a remake of the movie, at the same time, with the originality of a new movie. People might think that Michael Bay wanted to do exactly what George Lucas didn't in THX, and that we find out not too late. There's even a scene where we see Ewan McGregor and Sean Bean in a room where Bean is the spiritual and medical helper of McGregor considering his dislodgement of some of the rules in the establishment.
The Island is a movie which has high influences on science fictions movies such as THX-1138 (1971), Blade Runner (1982) and even The Matrix (1999). It gets some of the ideas of each of these movies, but adds others too. That's what saved the movie. I must say also that I liked a lot McGregor and Johansson... together. Not performances as somewhat to win an Oscar, but they make a nice couple throughout the movie. The story goes as a society living in an underground city (same thing as THX), where people who live there are monitored everywhere (even in their rooms). Men can't have their rooms in the same sector as the womens'. There's a proximity limit for a man and a woman to obey and in some scenes when Ewan and Scarlett are almost kissing each other, a guard comes nearby and separates them. They live there, because there has been a contamination in the outside world and when they're brought in, they are treated the same way as of The Matrix's, when they're released from a cocoon bag or something like that and start to "breathe" for the first time. But everything is just a lie made up by the people who control those who live there. They're actually clones of original people who live in the outside world. They are made up, because when a person needs to make a transplant of something, they will need the clones. This is a truly brand new idea in a science fiction movie and The Island scores big in that.
In order to like this movie, you must be patient. Don't get frustrated too much on the many, many bizarre action sequences of the movie, or you may dislike it. Specially the one that involves a building and an "R". The rest of the cast includes Djimon Hounson, Michael Clarke Duncan and Steve Buscemi in a role most like the others typical of him. His funniest line might be: "Just because you wanna know from where the hamburgers came from, doesn't mean you wanna meet the cow". There's a scene involving him and Ewan and Scarlett and there's a dialog exactly the same from one of Blade Runners'. As I said. The Island has many influences on other movies. But as long as it has something new to present, it won't be considering by some as a +1 in the sci-fi genre.